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"I want to apologize on behalf of those boys." She suddenly realized why she was here. He paused, raised his eyebrows slightly, and repeated: "Boys." Boys are like this.
"Are they your friends?"
"No," Marilyn said awkwardly, "No, they're just idiots."
He smiled, and so did she. She noticed that crow's feet appeared in the corners of his eyes. After those lines stretched out, his face changed, becoming softer and more like an ordinary person's face. She noticed that his eyes were brown, not the black ones she saw in the classroom. He was so thin, she thought, with broad shoulders like a swimmer's, and his skin was the color of sun-baked autumn leaves. She had never seen anyone like him.
"I guess this must happen to you often," she said softly.
"How would I know? This is my first class and the department asked me to give it on a trial basis."
"Feel sorry."
"It's okay," he said, "you saved it for last." They both looked down at the same time—he at the now-empty mug, she at the typewriter and neatly bundled copy paper at the end of his desk.
"Paleontology," he said after a moment.
"What?"
"Paleontology," he repeated, "my favorite subject is paleontology, and I want to dig up fossils."
"That's a kind of history," she said.
"I guess so." He grinned into his coffee cup, and Marilyn leaned across the table and kissed him.
On Thursday, during Professor Li's second class, Marilyn sat at the edge of the classroom. When Professor Li came in, she did not look up, but carefully wrote down the date of the day in her notes. The letter "S" in the word "September" was written solemnly and elegantly, and even the horizontal line on the letter "t" was Perfectly straight. As soon as Professor Li started teaching, her face started to heat up, as if she had walked into the scorching summer sun. She felt that her face must be red and shining like a beacon, but when she glanced around the classroom with the corner of her eye, she found that everyone's attention was on the content of the class. Although there were very few students coming to attend the lecture, they were either writing furiously on their notes or looking at the podium to listen to the lecture, and no one noticed her.
When she kissed him, she was startled by herself. That impulse was so strong - she once used this foolish energy to chase fallen leaves in the wind and jump over puddles on rainy days - without thinking, without resistance, without meaning, simple and harmless. She had never done anything like this before and would never do it again. Every time she thought about it, she felt weird and a little shocked. However, at that moment, she knew clearly that she felt something she had never felt before - that she wanted this man. A voice deep in her heart said: "He understands what it means to be different."
The touch of his lips also shocked her. He tasted like coffee, warm and slightly bitter, and he kissed her back, as if he was prepared, as if the kiss was his idea. When they finally separated, she was too shy to look him in the eye, staring at her knees and studying the flannel material of her skirt. Sweat dripped on her thighs through her petticoat. She mustered up the courage for a moment and glanced at him quickly over the hair blocking her face. She found that he was also looking at her shyly. He was not angry and his face had turned pink. color. "Maybe we'd better go somewhere else," he said, and she nodded and picked up her bag.
They walked along the river bank, passing red brick dormitories without saying a word. The Harvard rowing team is practicing on the river. The rowers' bodies rise and fall, and they work together to paddle in perfectly coordinated movements. The boat glides silently through the water. Marilyn knew these guys; they had taken her to movies and football games, and they all seemed to look the same, with light brown hair and rosy skin. There are many boys like this in high school. Marilyn has seen them all her life and knows them well. When she turns down their invitations in order to finish a paper or study, they turn to other girls. Standing on the river bank and looking over, they look like dolls with identical faces and indifferent expressions. She and James—whose face she could recall without difficulty—reached the pedestrian bridge, and she stopped and turned to look at him. He looked less like a professor and more like a teenager, shyly but enthusiastically holding her hand.
Where is James? What did he think of her? What he would never tell her, nor admit to himself, was that during that first class, he didn't notice her at all. He had seen her many times while talking about Roy Rogers, Gene Ottley, and John Wayne, but he didn't recognize her when she came into the office. She is just an ordinary girl with beautiful fair skin and lacks any obvious features. However, although he would never fully realize it, this was the reason he fell in love with her in the first place, because she blended in perfectly with the crowd because she looked so ordinary and natural.
Throughout the second class, Marilyn recalled the smell of his skin—clean, tangy, like the air after a storm—and the feel of his hands on her waist, so warm that even her palms grew warm. She peeked at him through her fingers. Every time she turned a page of lecture notes, he would deliberately put the ballpoint pen on the podium and click it. She realized that his eyes were wandering everywhere but never landing on her. When class was about to end, she was doing nothing in her seat, slowly putting the loose-leaf paper into the folder and stuffing the pencil back into her pocket. Her classmates, rushing to attend other classes, squeezed past her and bumped into her with their schoolbags. James was busy collecting handouts at the podium, cleaning the chalk dust on his hands, and returning the chalk to the edge of the blackboard. He didn't notice that she had packed up her books and tucked them under her arms, and was walking towards the door. Just as her hand was about to touch the doorknob, he called, "Wait a minute, Miss Walker." Her heart beat brightly.
The classroom was empty, and she leaned against the wall, trembling, as he closed his briefcase and descended the steps. To steady herself, she grabbed the door handle behind her. However, when he came over, he didn't smile. "Miss Walker," he said again, taking a deep breath, and she realized that she wasn't smiling either.
He was her teacher, he reminded her. She is his student. As her teacher, he would feel like he was abusing his teacher's rights if they—he lowered his head and fiddled with the handle of his handbag—if they got into a relationship. He wasn't looking at Marilyn, but she didn't know it because she was staring at her feet, looking at the scuffs on the uppers.
Marilyn tried her best to control her emotions, but failed. She stared at the gray scratches on the black leather and thought of her mother to cheer her up: You will meet good Harvard men. But you're not here to find a man, she told herself, you're here for something better. She didn't become as angry as she expected, but she felt a burning pain deep in her throat.
"I understand." She finally raised her head.
The next day, Marilyn came to Professor Li's office during his class time and said that she wanted to withdraw from his class. Less than a week later, they became lovers.
They spent the entire autumn together. James is the most serious and conservative person she has ever met. He is more willing to observe things from a closer distance, and his thinking is more cautious and objective. Only when they were alone in his small Cambridge apartment did he shed his reserve and display a fervor that left her breathless. Afterward, Marilyn would curl up on his bed, ruffling his short hair that was standing up from sweat. He looked at ease in those afternoons, in the way only she could make him feel, and she liked it. They would lie together, dozing and dreaming until six o'clock in the evening. Then Marilyn would put on her skirt while James buttoned his shirt and rearranged his hair—although the patch at the back would still stand up, Marilyn wouldn't tell him because it was the other part of him that only she could see. one side. She would give him a little kiss and then quickly run back to the dorm to sign in. James himself had begun to forget about the lock of hair, rarely remembering to look in the mirror after Marilyn left. Every time she kissed him and he opened his arms to welcome her into his arms, it felt like a miracle. In front of her, he felt calm and confident, which seemed to be something he had never felt before in his life.
Although James was born in the United States and has never been to other countries, he never felt that he belonged here. His father came to California under a false name, pretending to be the son of a neighbor who had immigrated years earlier. Although the United States is known as the "melting pot," Congress is afraid that the things in the melting pot will become too yellow, so it prohibits Chinese immigrants from immigrating to the United States and only allows the children of Chinese who have already come to the United States to enter. Therefore, James' father adopted the name of his neighbor's son and went to San Francisco to reunite with his "father". The neighbor's real son fell into the water and drowned a year before he came to the United States. From the beginning of President Chester Allen Arthur's administration to the end of World War II, almost every Chinese immigrant had a similar story. While the Irish, German and Swiss immigrants crowded on the ship deck waved to the light green torch of the Statue of Liberty, Chinese "coolies" had to find ways to sneak into the United States - a land that advocates that all people are created equal. . Those who successfully smuggle themselves will return to China to visit their wives at the appropriate time. After returning to the United States, they will pretend that their wives have given birth to a child in China and register the child's name with the authorities. If their compatriots in China want to make a fortune in the United States, they will come across the ocean with fictitious children's names. Norwegians, Italians and Russian Jews who took the ferry from Ellis Island to Manhattan, New York, generally settled along the railroads leading to Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota, while almost all the Chinese who entered the country in disguise were Taking root in California. In Chinatown, the identity of these imposters is easily revealed. Everyone uses a fake name and hopes not to be discovered or deported. Therefore, they try their best to blend in with the crowd and avoid being different.
However, James' parents did not take root in California. In 1938, when James was six years old, his father received a letter from his nominal "brother." At the beginning of the Great Depression, the brother went to the eastern United States to make a living and found work at a small boarding school in Iowa building and repairing houses, but now his mother (real mother, not fictional) was ill, He is going back to China, and his employer hopes that he can introduce reliable friends to replace him. The letter said that the employer likes Chinese people because they are quiet, hard-working and hygienic. It's a good position, and the school is very high-end. James' mother may be able to help in the school kitchen. Now, it depends on whether James' father is interested.
James didn't know Chinese, but all his life he remembered what the last paragraph of the letter looked like, scrawled in pen, and it was this paragraph that caught his parents' attention. The brother said that the school has a special rule for the children of employees. If they can pass the entrance examination, they can attend the school for free.
Job opportunities are valuable, and everyone is hungry, but what really moved James' parents was the last paragraph. To do this, they sold their furniture, carried two boxes across the United States, and took five "Greyhound" long-distance trains along the way, which lasted four days. When they arrived in Iowa, James' "uncle" took them to his apartment. James only remembered what that man's teeth looked like—even more crooked than his father's, with one tooth growing sideways, like a grain of rice waiting to be picked out by a toothpick. The next day his father put on his best shirt, buttoned all the way to the collar. He walked into Lloyd College with his friend. By the afternoon it was settled: he would start working next week. On the morning of the third day, James' mother put on her best dress and came to school with her husband. That night, the two each brought back a navy blue uniform with their new English names embroidered on it: Henry and Wendy.
A few weeks later, James' parents took him to Lloyd College to take the entrance exam. The examiner, a large man with a cotton-white beard, led James into an empty classroom and gave him a pamphlet and a yellow pencil. Seeing the test questions in the booklet, James immediately realized the school's cunningness: What kind of six-year-old child could understand (let alone pass) such a question? Maybe only the teacher's child can—if she's been tutoring her children. But for the child of a boilermaker, a restaurant girl, or a janitor, it's almost impossible. A square playground has a side of forty feet. How long is the fence surrounding it? When was America discovered? Which of the following words is a noun? Which of the following shapes can spell out a complete pattern? If a worker's child cannot answer the question, the principal will say: I'm sorry, your child failed the exam and did not meet the requirements of Lloyd College, so he cannot enroll for free.
However, James knew the answers to all the test questions. He read every newspaper he could find and all the books his father bought at the library sale for five cents a pack. So, he wrote on his answer sheet: one hundred and sixty feet; 1492; car; round. After answering the question, he put the pencil into the groove on the top of the desk. After twenty minutes, the bearded examiner raised his eyes to look at him. "Done already?" he asked. "You're so quiet, little one." He collected the booklet and pencils and led James back to the kitchen, where his mother was working. "I will grade the exam papers and let you know the results next week," he said. But James already knows he passed.
In September, when the new semester began, his father drove James to school in a Ford truck that the school had lent him for maintenance. "You are the first Eastern student to attend Lloyd's." His father reminded him, "Be a good example." On the first morning of school, James slid into his seat and the girl sitting next to him asked: "Your eyes What's wrong?" At this time, the teacher's horrifying cry came: "Shelley Byron!" James realized that he should be embarrassed at this time. Therefore, the second time he encountered this situation, he learned from experience and immediately blushed. In every class during the first week of school, students would study him: Where did this boy come from? He has a school bag and a Lloyd uniform, but he does not live in the school dormitory like other classmates. They have never seen such a person. His father was often called by the school to repair windows, change light bulbs, and mop floors. James was curled up in the last row of the classroom, watching the eyes of his classmates wandering between his father and him. James understood the questions of his classmates, so he lowered his head lower, the tip of his nose almost touching the page, until until the father leaves the classroom. In the second month, he told his parents that he hoped to be allowed to go to and from school by himself without having to be picked up or dropped off. In this way, he could pretend to be an ordinary student. As long as he wore Lloyd's school uniform, it would be easy to pretend.